


5 Times Castiel Was Human and the One Time He Really Was

by AllonsyHelen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Times, Angel Castiel, Castiel-centric, Human Castiel, Hurt Castiel, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, M/M, POV Castiel, Season 9, sam is there if you squint hard and don't think too much about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6050722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllonsyHelen/pseuds/AllonsyHelen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course Eve ate the fruit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Times Castiel Was Human and the One Time He Really Was

It is pain to love a disaster,

**6.**

Castiel has seen the tendrils of pink and blue reaching out hesitantly from their place beneath the horizon so many times he’s lost track. Light pushes forth, as a child being born into a cold world, then spreads as it finds its own warmth. There is a dawn inside of Castiel, he understands, and the parts of himself that have always been angel are gone. Gaps within his awareness and a body that has long felt like home in the way the Winchesters do are now filled with new sensations.

Hunger is one, something he hadn’t understood until Famine tapped into the human part of him, making him restless and empty, never able to be fulfilled by Jimmy’s favorite food. When Castiel had touched the burgers he could feel every atom in them, the meat a jumble of life, the grain like the sunshine that beat upon it as it grew. This made him more hungry, but not for food – hungry for Earth, the beating heart of humanity and the circle of life that supported it. Hunger was already pushing his grace to the side as it craved for things long before Famine stepped onto the Earth.

Weariness is another feeling that Castiel has yet to grow used to. He only notices through the physical sensations – a pulsing ache in his head, near his ear or behind his forehead, a pull on his eyelids. He normally does not notice his mind growing sluggish, for its capabilities are so diminished now even in the best of conditions. Where he once saw brilliant hues that the human mind couldn’t understand, could lift an anvil with the tip of his smallest finger, was capable of solving complex calculations within seconds, he now feels as though everything inside of him moves slower. He can only entertain a single train of thought at a time, which makes it more difficult to notice and understand his surroundings while trying to concentrate on a conversation or even, occasionally, a single thought.

When Castiel’s angelic mind used to wander, it would take him across vast oceans and past blazing stars in a blink, colors, calculations, imagery flashing through his mind quickly. Now he finds himself unable to process more than a few details: Sam’s tie, the stiffness of his suit at his elbows, a cool breeze that arises the urge in him to find a warm fire and hot drink that must come from echoes of Jimmy. He wonders at facts he used to know: the aimless thoughts of a sparrow that took off from a tree, the number of freckles on Dean Winchester’s body, the sound of the waves meeting for the first time when the ocean was made.

**1.**

The curve of Eve’s hips and the hair leading downward, the stretch of Adam’s muscular arms, her stomach round and full from eating the fruit of the Garden, the twitch of his ears toward birdsong that comes from the trees. These are the things that God has chosen to give to humans. Murmurs can be heard throughout the garrison, secret meetings with thunderclaps punctuating angry words. Castiel understands why God loves the humans. The two of them have found perfection in imperfection.

Angels were not meant to roam the Earth; it was created as a home for the humans, as the space between reality and nothingness was made for the angels. Castiel knows, as he floats, unreal, above the brilliantly green grass, that his fascination with this place and the two people is odd. But there is something to Adam’s laughter that is so foreign to Castiel. And the whisper of Eve’s voice once the sun falls below the trees sounds nearly as good as the harp music of the Heavenly courts.

Everything in the Garden is substantial, but it still smacks of Heaven. The beams of yellow light that fall through the green of the trees, the peaceful sound of a breeze rushing through the air, these things may not exist in Heaven, but the pleasure that goes with them, bubbling from somewhere inside of Castiel’s vast mind, feels familiar. It is a feeling that has never been spoken of by other angels, but seems to be understood by the two humans. Castiel feels his being shiver as he passes through the branches and leaves of a large tree that spreads itself up toward the blue sky, one he would much later learn is called an Oak tree. He watches Eve as she cups her hands beneath the clear waters of a stream. He watches, later, as Adam’s fingers roam across Eve’s skin, mixing with the sunlight that falls upon both of them as he unfolds and then remakes the world for her.

Castiel wishes he could have hands like hers, to let the water of the stream flow over them. He wants hands like his, to touch skin and press inside of it. It is a small irony that the first angel to think of taking on a form in this fragile, beautiful new world is his brother, the one who leapt from Heaven in his contempt of the things that Castiel is so drawn to.

A sharp sense of grief burns through the air of the Garden as the hiss of the serpent urges Eve, soft curves and full lips, smiles and hair and skin, to eat of the forbidden fruit. Castiel floats above, as do many of his brothers and sisters, watching, waiting. The air is alive. The wind trembles; the Garden feels as if it sits upon a high point, and it must fall, in one direction or another. Will it fall with Lucifer?

Juice from the fruit drips down Eve’s chin.

The world tumbles and it looks less like rocks crumbling from the side of a mountain, and more like loin cloths, hastily made and wrapped around beautiful curves and crevices. Castiel is the only angel to weep.

**6.**

Humans are amazing, and greedy.

Castiel observes them from within now, not only amidst them, and for the first time he understands the more nuanced and negative emotions. When he witnesses a man steal from another man, he feels the hunger in his own stomach and turns away. If he ever becomes an angel again, he thinks, he will be much more benevolent to them.

If.

Hopelessness is an emotion he finds himself sunk deep into the dark sands of. He will likely never get his grace back. Metatron is too far gone, and he will take all of Heaven as his own. The angels are scattered across the Earth, mixing with humanity, and that cannot go well. Castiel has brought around complete disaster for his own family so many times, killing thousands of them, and now expelling them from their home. The guilt of it is strong, and complicated.

Loneliness, too, is a heavy emotion. Castiel has been alone for entire centuries before, and hasn’t suffered for it beyond slight boredom. Now, however, having had his grace stolen from him and being cast down out of his home forever, with angels hunting after him, he knows that there are people on Earth who care about him. The Winchesters, it seems, care for him. But this knowledge does nothing to help his loneliness.

He shivers at night in the cold and wonders how humans do anything at all.

**2.**

When all of the oceans join together and everything screams as it dies, the angels stand perfect sentinel above. Their father’s wrath toward the humans is a warning: do not defy me, or you will swallow the salt of the sea.

The souls of the dead and damned pass through the core of the earth, into Hell, where Castiel has not yet been and has no desire to ever go. Sometimes he floats toward the door to Purgatory, wonders at it, thinks of the things contained inside, old enough to defeat him, older than anything but hatred. Why is it, he wonders, that God created hatred and monsters before he created the humans?

He asks this of some of the others, as the angry ocean churns and a lone arc made of wood pulled from trees tosses and turns across the surface. He asks Arariel, for it seems the natural choice to speak to the angel of the waters of the Earth which have now drowned civilization. Arariel has no thoughts, and he disappears from Castiel, as if bothered by the question and with no time to tell him as much. He asks Hesediel, the angel of benevolence, but Hesediel has none and tells Castiel that soon enough there will be war with the demons, and that he had best prepare and stop playing philosopher, a word which in Enochian is synonymous with the Earthly words for dirt. He asks Kiraman Katibin, recorder of human thoughts, acts, and feelings, but he tells Castiel that the humans have deserved this for a long time, and he looks weary of his job and glad for the rest. Castiel wonders if he would feel the same, had he the opportunity to know the humans as intimately.

**6.**

To be human is to know pain.

This is a fact Castiel has had memorized for a long time, like he knows the stories of his brothers and sisters, and of the famous humans like Julius Caesar, stabbed in the back by the ones he trusted the most, and Martin Luther King Jr, killed for telling the truth. These humans knew pain, and so did countless others, but until now he only knew their pain as a fact.

Now he feels how it must have felt to be Caesar, turning to look his friend in the eye. “Et tu, Brute?” He can feel the words on his lips as he walks out of the bunker and down the road to the town of Lebanon, Kansas.

A fact: Lebanon, Kansas is in the center of the United States of America.

Castiel thinks of this, and other facts that he knows: the most common name in the world is Mohammed. Rhode Island is the smallest state with the longest name. It took Leo Tolstoy 6 years to write _War and Peace_. Dean’s eyes remind Castiel of the trees of the Garden. Every year, 98% of the atoms in the human body are replaced. The Bible speaks of gemstones over 1700 times. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, his eyes are the only thing I can think of, why did he turn me away?

At some point, he stops walking, but he only notices when a truck rushes past far too close. He steps away from the road instinctively, the human part of him – all of him, he thinks – taking over.

What color were Brutus’s eyes, and did the preacher see the bullet before it pierced through him?

Of course Eve ate the fruit.

Of course she did.

Castiel sinks to the ground on his knees, his hands clasped together, raises his face to the sky, and thinks that he finally understands pain. It is deeper than the cuts and gashes, the bones in his body grinding together. It is somewhere he cannot place, somewhere that has always existed within him but is now more overwhelming than ever.

He wishes he could turn it off.

For the first time, he feels anger at her, anger at the woman whose lips mimicked the song of the birds underneath the blue sky of the Garden. The emotion scares him, and he leans forward, presses his forehead to the ground, and the gravel and rocks dig into his skin, mimicking: the gravel is the bird, his heart is her lips, and they sing the same song.

**3.**

Castiel likes Lot.

Many of the other angels do not pay the humans much mind unless they are ordered to become involved in affairs on Earth. There is much to be busy with in the Angelic army, and the fight against demons, the army of Satan, may ebb and flow but it never truly wanes. Centuries pass with the peculiar clang of blade on blade, of ripping souls and cracks formed in the fold of reality, fading once beings have plunged through to something unknown entirely to Castiel.

There are murmurs of what happens to the demons they kill, but most angels do not care. Once, Castiel asks Balthazar, another angel, a good warrior but prone to wandering as Castiel does. Balthazar tells him that he thinks there must be another Hell, the demon’s hell, and with a laugh he suggests that this may be Earth.

Castiel does not find it amusing to think that humans were once demons, but he spends a century thinking on it. Ultimately he decides that this cannot be the case, and he continues to press blade into darkness, twisting and turning and evading, ever surviving, for the secret of the fight is that the light always wins.

When the ongoing war becomes boring and the battles predictable, Castiel turns his ears away from Heaven and toward Earth. These are busy times, and the Father has paid less attention to the war and the angels. Michael commands the army with the fury of the gods of Olympus, leading them closer to where Lucifer sits upon his barred throne. Castiel finds it unwise to dance so closely with evil, but he is just a seraphim – a good fighter, regarded amongst his peers, but his wit is no match for that of an archangel.

Castiel likes Lot.

When his wife turns her eyes back on her home, and her atoms burn into brightness and she fades from human to a pillar of salt, Castiel floats downward out of Heaven to watch. Lot’s knees fall to the ground, and he puts his head in his hands. Castiel wants to reach out with a beam of himself and touch the place where Lot’s shoulder blades meet.

He does not understand why such a good man must suffer. Is it not clear where his loyalties lie? Is it truly necessary to push him through so much?

Castiel is no one to question his father’s will, but the expression on Lot’s face as he shouts upwards toward the sky in anger stays burned into Castiel’s very self for centuries.

The other angels speak of her with disgust. “She longed for a life of sin, she was not worth saving,” they say, repeating the words of their Father in a consistent echo.

Castiel says this, too, but he thinks that he knows why she looked back, that most human of women. Wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t they all? Shouldn’t they all?

The next time he finds himself face to face with a devil, its darkness conforms in a twist of evil and lashes out at the brother fighting beside Castiel. It swallows him whole, and Castiel watches, and thinks of Lot’s wife.

Humans go on to call her _Edith_ , which means blessed and war. Blessed war indeed; Castiel sinks his blade into the demon’s soul.

**6.**

For awhile, Castiel moves. He can do nothing else, and he’s in danger. He’s a wanted man with blood on his now very human hands. He doesn’t pray for forgiveness; he prays for peace.

He finds it in a Gas ‘n’ Sip.

Peace is a lack of motion, and the hours spent manning the cash register on warm days feel like the closest thing to peace he’s going to find. People come in and out and he watches them with a sense of awe.

They are amazing, and they don’t even know it. The man who purchases a large slushie for his young daughter who already has chocolate stains on her sweatshirt; he is beautiful because he is so naïve. He wants to provide for his daughter but he doesn’t know how. Castiel whispers across the counter that he should try purchasing her an apple, because there is sugar in fruit. The man looks angry with him and holds up his middle finger, but Castiel hopes he’s planted an idea in the man’s mind.

The teenagers who come in hand in hand are beautiful, too, and Castiel listens while they argue by the sunflower seeds. He tells them that he thinks love knows no age and that while the love of their parents may be far more profound than their love for each other, this shouldn’t discourage them. They roll their eyes simultaneously, which he thinks is a good sign of connection between the two of them.

Castiel finds that he enjoys interacting with humans, even when they’re irritable with him. He speaks to the men who come to the store late at night, their trucks parked outside, looking for a coffee and a break from the road. Castiel tries to strike up conversations with them, but their responses are typically less than substantial. Still, he likes trying. After so many years of watching humans from above, and then of being amongst them but not like them, he finds that it’s fascinating to communicate with them now.

He only wishes he could speak with Dean again, as a human. Their only conversations were less than pleasant, and he wants to observe Dean now, through these human eyes. He wants to sit in the bunker with him, eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and talk to him about humanity – or anything. Perhaps Dean would prefer to speak about music, or famous people who were never quite important enough to make it onto Castiel’s radar. Perhaps Dean could show him the movies and shows he’s always quoting, so that Castiel might grow to understand him – and humanity – better.

But he is also angry with Dean, and this would color any conversation they could have now. Dean kicked him out. He hurt him, and though anger is an emotion Castiel has certainly felt as an angel, he has never felt it in this way. There are strings running through it, strings of shame and sadness and love and rejection.

Still. It’s probably a very human thing that Castiel spends most of his hours at the Gas ‘n’ Sip waiting for the day Dean will walk up to the counter and say some stupid one-liner about junk food.

**4.**

Castiel is chosen from the ranks as the one to save the righteous man from Hell.

He is not given much warning, only a moment or two to prepare himself to plunge into the depths. He has been on the battlefields of Hell by now, but he hasn’t been to the darkest places where human souls writhe and cry out. Any other angel, perhaps, would not need time to prepare at all, would simply reach into Perdition and do the job without thought.

Castiel spends the brief moments before it is time to save Dean Winchester searching the life of the man who is even now sharpening the blade of a cruel knife in the pit. He watches his birth, as he gasps for air and begins to cry, watched over by a beautiful smiling couple. He watches the first four years, filled with gurgles and steps and words, then a new baby is brought into the household, setting into place everything that is to come. Castiel feels the grief of the child Dean as Mary Winchester burns on the ceiling, and it isn’t lost on him her name: the woman who made the ultimate sacrifice, gave her life to a child destined for far greater than she. He sends a useless prayer to Heaven that Mary Winchester’s soul rests in peace.

He watches Dean grow amongst guns and knives, salt and holy water, talismans, bones, swords, blood. Broken arms and legs, freckles and green eyes, knobby knees and hands tight around a baby brother who grows in dark innocence.

Castiel watches Dean follow order after order, a soldier bred for a war he did not start. Castiel’s incorporeal being shivers toward the man. By the time he reaches the dark road and Dean making the deal, a simple exchange, his soul for the life of his brother, Castiel shivers. This is the man who draws blood and screams in Hell today.

His years in the pit have taught him nothing but how to send the souls of the born damned to a lower existence. These brief moments before he grips Dean’s shoulder tight, Castiel learns more than he has in a long time.

He thinks of Lot’s wife, and the salt pillar, and he looks back as he and the righteous man shoot toward the Earth.

**6.**

The child is crying once more, and Castiel feels frazzled. He lifts her from her crib. He cannot touch her and pull out the fever, nor can he calm her with a look. Normally a small thing like a fever in a baby in a tiny town in the middle of a country as vast as this one would be unimportant to an angel.

But Castiel is no angel.

“She is very warm,” he tells Dean, who is busy cleaning the blood from the glass.

“Well she’s a baby, of course she’s warm,” Dean says, glancing back at him with a smile. “Babies get warm. They cry. They crap themselves. It’s what they do.”

“She is unusually warm,” Castiel responds, holding her to his chest, rocking up and down on his heels.

Dean leaves the rag, now soaked with blood, on the floor to deal with later. He comes over to Castiel and holds out his hands. “May I, Mr. Mom?” he asks.

As Castiel hands Dean the child, their hands touch, and Castiel swears he’s never felt anything quite as electric as the feeling of his own human skin on Dean’s. When it was his vessel’s skin, it felt good, yes, but not like this. This connection is more pure and more _human_ than any he’s felt so far.

Dean leans down and presses his lips to the baby’s forehead, then makes a face. “Yup,” he says, rocking her as Castiel did when she starts to fuss again. “She’s got a fever. Sammy used to be feverish though, I got this.” He hands her back to Castiel without ceremony and goes off to find something, presumably to fix it.

Once Dean has rounded the doorway, Castiel looks into the eyes of this child. She has been a human for longer than he has, so he directs his question toward her: “Does it always feel like that, or is this something special?”

The way his own heart pounds in his chest when Dean returns triumphant from the medicine cabinet suggests the answer to him: it is something special.

**5.**

Millennia tremble inside of Castiel and he thinks he might be about to find the answer to the question he couldn’t bring himself to ask Balthazar all those centuries ago: where do angels go when they die?

It hasn’t been a bad life, overall, and in what he knows to be his final moments, he wonders what Sam and Dean would think of, if they were in his position. Or what Edith thought, as her atoms rearranged in an instant. Had she had time, he knows she would have considered herself, and the things she has known and done.

Castiel doesn’t have time for that, so instead he looks to the man for whom he has done all of this, the man who somehow manages to hold an entire mass of beings, all of the humans Castiel has ever watched from above or below, inside himself. The man who rode into the final battlefield of the Apocalypse blaring Def Leppard’s Rock of Ages from a cassette tape in the sound system of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala.

Castiel waits in silence for his moment. He holds a crude bomb in his hand, one that will zap Michael far enough away to give Sam the time he needs to take over.

He thinks briefly of what has come to pass which never should have. He thinks of the many, many years, too many to count, during which he has fought battles he did not understand for angels who did not care about him. He is looking at two of the most powerful beings in the universe, second only to his Father, and as he finds his cue, he thinks of the swell of time, and how long he has watched the humans crawl and walk across this beautifully scarred planet. He thinks of the things they have done, and will do. He thinks of how worth it saving them is, as he watches Dean. He thinks of his freckles, and green eyes, and then all of the humans he has ever seen, too many to name, too many to comprehend, with their feelings and words and movements. Irrational, angry, hateful, wonderful creatures. Creatures that will live on long after he has ceased to be.

He tries to think of something to say to encompass all of this, words in Enochian that would mean the world to his brothers and explain to them why he is saving the humans.

Instead, more appropriately, all he says is, “Hey! Assbutt!”

but what a beautiful, beautiful disaster.

 


End file.
